[MtnClimber]

Could there be spiritual things that doctors do not understand?

[datura]

Note to all physicians: You can’t measure Him.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

What about the electrolytes in the blood (including sodium and potassium) still helping to carry an existing electrical charge, even if the heart had stopped.

The reference to a continuing arterial blood circulation doesn’t make any sense so I’ll need somebody to interpret.

When I went into a slow cardiac arrest (took about 30 minutes before I croaked, right in front of the hospital and doctor), they hit me twice with the defibrillator which restarted my heart but their biggest problem was getting a breathing tube properly down my throat to get oxygen into my lungs and a restarting blood circulation.

Doctors still don’t know what did me in but they think it was a rare chemical imbalance of the body’s salt that directly stopped the heart. After two comas, pneumonia, an awful back rash and 50+ brain seizures, I awoke and thought “What the hell happened” though I knew I was in a hospital.

My heart’s been fine since they restarted it. Can’t say the same for my wallet.

Sorry, no lights, tunnels, angels, relatives or debt collectors.

Just glad to be back from “the other side”, Dr. Venkman.

[tophat9000]

I’d be curious to do this with animals let’s see if they get the same Delta Way first after death. If it’s Unique to humans it’d be very intriguing.

[mountn man]

Reminds me of the movie Brainstorm.

[EinNYC]

My cat died from bone marrow cancer about a year ago. Since her body was not making any more red blood cells, all her cells were starved for oxygen, including her heart. When I came home from work and picked her up to feed her some of the prescription food the vet told me to give her, she struggled a bit, spit out the food and then, like a light switch suddenly turned off, died in my arms. The vet later said her heart gave out from the slight struggle because it was so oxygen starved. At the moment she stopped moving in my arms, I laid her gently on my bed and stroked her head. I have always wondered if she was at all aware of that gentle touch, and I hope she went out feeling that love.

If the heart stops, does the brain immediately lose consciousness?

[Pelham]

Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Roger Penrose

[Chickensoup]

Interesting. In healthcare training in the seventies I was taught that the brain may be able to hear and feel up to an half hour after death. To guard one’s tongue around the comatose and the newly dead.

Always thought that sitting with the dead was a hat tip to the fact that we die slowly. IIRC kidney cells have a four hour window.